| ART:21: |
Can you tell me about the process
of making Überorgan?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Well, there isn't really a set
process.
Lately the pieces have been all different from each other,
so each one takes on a different process. Like with the larger
scale
pieces it's often the case where I don’t even have an
idea for something of this size unless there's already a venue
set up for it. I would have a specific space in mind already
and I start visualizing the work in that space. I'm talking
more about the Überorgan specifically. That process involved
being approached by MASS MOCA and they wondered what I would
do with a space that was basically the size of a football
field. Using inflatables is really an economical way of filling
up that much space and also something that makes sound to
really engage the viewer. So I cam up with this extrapolated
organ and went from there. It just seemed really natural for
that space.
But other pieces involve more of a quirky kind of process.
Especially depictions of the body. For instance, there was
a series of works that I did based on research that involved
taking a bath in this black paint...filling the bathtub slowly
with this black opaque liquid that would block out my skin
and Patty would photograph it every couple of seconds as it
crept up and covered me over. Then, layering the photos together
resulted in this kind of topographical depiction of the body.
And so I used that mapping as the basis for some drawings
that I made and also realized three dimensionally in the figures
that are in the piece "Pentecost," the big tree
piece with the figures tapping on the tree.
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| ART:21: |
Did you have to invent things
to make it possible to make Überorgan?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Yeah, when I first started thinking
about Überorgan and putting it in the space at MASS MOCA.
I just said that I never make preliminary studies or anything,
but I did make models of balloons and I think I was just a
little nervous about filling—what was it—fifteen
thousand square feet. I didn't want to get caught short handed.
So I felt much better seeing these little models in the space
and having a basic idea of what it would feel like in there.
So I made really basic shapes and then really crude drawings
or patterns of the shapes. It's good that they were so crude
because it really allowed for a lot of play in the actual
fabrication when we started sewing them together. I mean these
balloons are huge. Like the size of a small school bus. To
sew them there was one person on the sewing machine and two
other people that were there just to feed the material through.
There was a lot of mass to deal with just in their uninflated
state.
So going back to using models and making little drawings based
on those...what I conceived the patterns would be like. It's
taking a little bit of a jump because you're taking a three
dimensional model and thinking about it in terms of planes
and how you could make that just in flat surfaces that are
then bent around each other. I really like the feel of and
the look of the bags, the balloons being constrained by netting.
That was really part of the process of creating the shapes.
Once the bags were sewn and inflated I used fishing net and
tailored that around the balloons and I was able to further
define and cinch them in and let them out indifferent areas.
So it was neat. It was a really quick way of controlling a
huge volume, a physical volume.
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| ART:21: |
But did you have to invent tools
for yourself?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Not for the balloons. Maybe for
some of the mechanical things. The balloons were all made
with a fabricator outside of my studio.
You saw pictures of the studio—it's not super huge. We
needed, you know, thousands of square feet. So I did all of
the mechanical work in my studio—the player mechanism
and different switches that reinterpreted the score and so
forth
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| ART:21: |
Tell me about the sound in Überorgan.
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| HAWKINSON: |
For Überorgan I felt that
I was going to have a real strong physical presence, but I
felt like it needed to also have this kind of audible component.
They look like these kind of whales suspended in the air and
hovering about you. And the sound is really biomorphic and
sounds kind of like a bleating, or a whaling sound. But it's
all based on a score that I put together using lots of old
church hymns. I have to refresh my memory, what did I use?
"Sailor's Hornpipe" and "Swan Lake" and
there was an improvisational piece that I invited a guest
composer in for, a friend that just kind of messed around
with the keyboard. So there was this score and then it's constrained
to just a scale of twelve tones. You're used to hearing a
melody played in something that reaches up into other octaves
but in this case anything that would go up into the next octave
has to drop back down and it further abstracts
the original score and removes it further from certain recognizable
melodies. So then there were also a series of switches that
filtered or reinterpreted the initial score.
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| ART:21: |
Where does the interest in music
come from?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Using the hymns...I did grow
up going to church. I still go to church. We're trying to
find a church that we like in the area but are having a little
bit of a problem finding something that really feels right.
I grew up hearing these old Protestant hymns, and some of
them are really beautiful and they bring e really strong connotations
and memories back and also reflect faith and other issues.
I was interested in using those, but really directly. Like
I said, it's really hard for most people to even recognize
them. I can kind of catch passages and I get an idea of where
we are in the score. I was interested in using some of that
as material. I mentioned earlier that the switches reinterpret
the score. One would kind of flip-flop the orientation of
the notes to the keyboard so that what's normally played at
the high end is played at the low end. Another switch is the
key that it's played in. All these switches are being activated
kind of spontaneously just by viewers going through the space
so there's no telling when it's going to shift. And so it
really is played out a different way each time someone passes
through.
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| ART:21: |
And you can also play it, right?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Yeah, you can also stop the playing
score at a blank space to expose the keyboard. The keyboard
consists basically of these photosensitive switches. So by
covering one of the switches—blocking out the light—
you'd trigger one of the notes. So you can stop it at a blank
space and play it like a piano, like a light-sensitive piano.
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| ART:21: |
Were you fascinated by doing
a piece out of air, or was it just economy?
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| HAWKINSON: |
Well using the materials, just
these thin membranes filled with air, it had a very attractive
quality for me. Thinking of sculpting with air. In a lot of
my work I use transparent materials, especially in mechanical
pieces, because I like to be able to see what's going on and
keep everything very light and visible. This had kind of an
ethereal quality that really appealed to me. And also, it
was a really economical way of filling the space and I liked
the idea of traveling light. This thing that could really
go up in a week and it's just so expansive and organic also.
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| ART:21: |
What about the adaptability of
Überorgan, how it changes from place to place?
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| ART:21: |
I was actually thinking about
the last night because I'm going to be installing Uberorgan
again, this time in San Diego. And it's, a smaller space so
I was thinking about how I've got this piece now that I'm
going to be maybe stuck with for the rest of my life and hopefully
people will want to see it in other venues. I'm going to have
to really keep it kind of alive for myself as well. And one
nice thing about it is how it can be reconfigured in a different
space and each time it becomes kind of a different piece.
I was thinking about how I'm going to be dealing with this
big installation
piece for some time and it's going to be important to keep
it alive to myself and be able to see it as a new thing each
time it's set up. And so I think it's really good that it
can be reconfigured and it just naturally extends to being
reconfigured into each different space because of the different
physicalities of different venues. I'd like to see it in more
of a square, really symmetrical space where equidistant from
one of the horns. More of a classical setting for it. And
also I think it would be interesting to use it more vertically,
in a really vertical space.
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| ART:21: |
Tell me about the installation
in NY?
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| ART:21: |
When I installed the piece in
New York the gallery was obviously really different from MASS
MOCA which was one big open space—one long narrow space.
The gallery in New York was divided into six rooms: one gigantic
room and a couple of giant rooms and then some slightly smaller
rooms, but they are all pretty big. But I wanted to see it
as this thing that was growing into the different gallery
spaces, real biomorphic in that way. I was afraid that the
sound quality might be lost. That you might lose a sense of
the score because it was divided up into the different rooms.
But in the end I was really happy with the sound. There's
so many reflective surfaces in that space that when you're
out in the hallway you can still hear the further reaches
and put things together. But it was definitely different than
in Massachusetts.
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| ART:21: |
Did it take a lot of planning?
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| HAWKINSON: |
In New York I had already made
the model that I had talked about and I felt confident just
in occupying the space and I didn’t want to think about
it too much. I wanted to just really remain blank, to be able
to play around with it and be spontaneous with the installation.
So I didn’t do a lot of preliminary thinking about placement.
I had a general idea what balloon went into what gallery and
there were a couple of instances where I shifted things around
but pretty much stuck with the original plan. Installing the
tubes and stuff like that goes pretty fast. In the New York
installation I ended up wrapping all the tubes with tape.
Normally the tube when it's inflated is really rigid and it
just goes in a straight line, or if it does bend it makes
a ninety degree bend, a really sharp bend. And I wanted the
tubes in this New York space to curve around and play off
of the rectilinear architecture.
So by wrapping the tube with this kind of strapping tape it
gave it a kind of intestinal quality and snaking, so they
bend very gracefully.
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| ART:21: |
It's a very organic piece, alive
even.
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| HAWKINSON: |
Yeah. I think it's organic. There's
an organic aspect in much of my work that maybe has to do
with keeping the rules really open. There's this hand held,
hand made aspect in a lot of the work that just by nature
creates it's own signature, creates these kind of organic
references. It's not something that I'm really trying to go
after—it's sort of by product I think.
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